The present invention relates to a system that maintains objects created and modified within designated directories on a per-client basis in a network filesystem. Diskless clients are growing in popularity because they do not require any local hard disk space to operate. They boot over a network and run entirely using network-based filesystems. Because the applications and operating system are stored on a server, they do not have to be duplicated on each client. This centralization also makes it easy to change client configurations because all of the relevant files are stored on the server. Configuration changes can be made even when the client is not running.
Furthermore, because all applications run on the server, low-end client hardware is sufficient for good performance. A high-end server and multiple low-end clients are typically much less expensive than using a midrange server and midrange clients.
However, when a network file system (NFS) is used to support a large number of diskless clients, there are filesystems that are large and mostly read-only. Unfortunately, even when only a small amount of the filesystem must be writable by the clients, this forces the entire filesystem to be replicated for each client.